I always took his wager to argue against Christianity.
Pascal’s argument is philosophical and not addressed to believers but to atheists who see no reason for believing in God. For them it is not a question of gambling but being prudent because it is foolish to rule out the Creator’s existence:
God creates the link between action and consequences. Otherwise they would remain unexplained. It is quite clear from the Beatitudes that the consequences of our virtues not arbitrary but their inevitable outcome. In other words there is cosmic justice and it doesn’t exist by chance…
If we consider conscience as a guide which is the result of our experience, what we learn and what we are then it follows that conscience is related to wisdom.
That is not correct. Laws is about relation between variables so we can use a set of laws to know outcome variables from (name removed by moderator)ut variables. This doesn’t leave any room for decision of a being in cosmos.
That is not correct. The Schrödinger equation is a deterministic equation. Our interpretation of wave function is however is probabilistic.
This means that the Karma of dead person (old person) is transferred to zygot (new person). There is however no relation between the old and new person since there is nothing that carry the identity in your system of belief. So the new person can for example suffer because of Karma of old person. This sounds absurd to me.
So, the karma is the result of personal judgment?
Are you assuming that God judges or judged these people by the same standard with which He measures the bishops of the Catholic Church?
The problem is that there are different types of believers. For example, for those who adhere to the strict ISIS style of Sunni Islam, unless you are a Sunni Muslim, you cannot get into heaven, regardless of how many good deeds you perform on earth. All the earthly good deeds that you perform will mean nothing to Allah, unless you convert sincerely to Sunni Islam.
But these Indian Hindus were left in the dark to worship their gods such as Vishnu, Sri (Lakshmi), Shiva, Parvati (Durga), Brahma and Saraswati. Why enlighten one small group of people, and leave everyone else in complete darkness?
Wagering is gambling, there are no prudent bets. Pascal says we cannot rationally determine whether God exists, but we can rationally gamble out of self-interest. His entire argument is based in self-interest on the pretense that God punishes good people for lack of belief.
And sometimes God breaks that link. Isn’t that is what “forgiveness of sins” about? Avoiding the consequences of one’s sin. In Buddhism the consequences of your actions are unavoidable, so it is important to think carefully before acting.
The Christian view called soul competency or soul liberty says every person has free will, and so is free to choose her belief according to her own conscience, and answers to God alone.
It is perfectly correct in the realm of quantum mechanics. The laws cannot tell you exactly when a particular C-14 atom will decay. All the laws say is that the atom has a 50% chance of decaying within its half-life. That is what “half-life” means.
There is a relation, the carried over karma. You are not a newborn baby, though you are causally linked to a newborn baby, so the new zygote is not a dying man, though it is causally linked to a dying man. There is a causal link because one of the (name removed by moderator)uts to the zygote is the causal result of the dying man.
A twenty year old commits a crime. Why should the twenty-one year old suffer for that crime? A twenty year old is obviously not a twenty-one year old. The two are linked in the same chain of cause and effect. In Buddhism a person is not a static Platonic-style ideal; a person is an ongoing changing process. People are constantly changing; they are not static.
Not directly. Our actions are the result of our personal judgement. The effects of those actions are the results of karma. Our action is to throw the rock into the air. The result is a rock landing on our head. In that scenario, karma is gravity.
So what? Why should I care if the atheist chooses NOT to take up any persuasive burden?
But you said if people don’t care about the value, purpose and meaning of life they are being unrealistic. I pointed out that many terminally ill people DO lose interest in life and I wonder how it is that you can tell them their disinterest is somehow unrealistic. Why are your interests and values obligatory or reasonable for someone else whose worldview might be totally different?
…that was my point. Which one of us is in a position to absolutely say (as you did) what is and isn’t realistic insofar as “the value, purpose and meaning of life.”?
You’re asking me?
In order to get closer to the truth, we have to go beyond what we know. We have to further explore our world and connect with its deeper truths. This entails developing new modes of understanding as well as the technologies to pierce the veil of appearance, in order to bring that underlying structure to light in our minds.
If one doesn’t play with triangles and try to discern their inherent properties, one isn’t going to realize the principles that define them.
We all have a relationship with God. Devotees of various religions are enlightened sufficiently to worship God as He has made Himself known to them. No one is in complete darkness. Actually, that sense comes from an encounter with God, being a realization of how far we are from the Truth. It’s not as bad as attempting to use the Pythagorean theorem to describe the meeting place of quantum mechanics and relativity, but eastern thought can take us only so far in describing the nature of God. Christianity brings us much closer. In the end, the sheep are not divided from the goats based on theological correctness, but through the acts of love which define the person we choose to be. It is stated as such in our scripture and makes complete sense.
“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” Aquinas.
Karma. I’ve seen plenty of examples of it, both in history and in the present. Don’t forget Galatians 6:7: “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.” This is a Christian Karma, not the Buddhist/Hindu Karma that focuses heavily on reincarnation. Rather it works in combination with Romans 6:23: “The wages of sin is death.” Just about everyone I’ve personally known who as lived in a prolonged adulterous relationship has eventually suffered an unpleasant and untimely death. You don’t normally see this in a faithful marital relationship. Look at the fates of Henry VIII (died at an early age of an infected leg) and John F. Kennedy (an adulterer and sexual degenerate who was smote by the Almighty, using a man as his instrument, again at an early age). Ditto, Martin Luther King. Alas, sometimes the Almighty sees fit to strike at the innocent to punish the guilty, as in the case of the infant son of David and Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12) and the Angel of Death of Exodus 12. Scary stuff.
Lets put that aside for sake of the argument (please read following). But what probabilistic nature of quantum realm has to do with the intelligence which is needed for decision?
I don’t understand you. The whole of idea behind the cycle of life is meaningless if what you are saying is correct because the Karma as you stated it is not attached to the person. In fact there is no self in Buddhism so the idea worrying about Karma in next life is meaningless.
Hold on, there is no concept of self in Buddhism so how we could possibly describe the concept of person. Moreover, we are talking about a old man and a zygote. I have problem understanding how they are causally related. I also have problem with why Karma of a old man should be transferred to zygote. It is like punishing one person for a crime another person committed.
Well, I think you need to convince me that intelligence and decision related to it is possible in Buddhist doctrine since Cosmos follows laws of Niyamas. This is related to first comment.
Karma is attached to one of the five constituents of a person, so the karma is a part of the person. At death the other four constituents change. All five constituents change from moment to moment, it is jut that the change is rather more drastic at the death to new life change.
You are part of the same causal chain as you-last-week and you-next-week. You need to think about things more in terms of causal chains that change rather than fixed selves.
A person is a collection of parts that constantly change. There is no inner unchanging essence. The classic example is a chariot, but a car will do as well. There is no self-of-car in a car, no essence-of-car. Remove all the individual parts of the car: wheels, doors, seats, engine etc. and there is nothing left, no essence-of-car. A “car” is merely a mental designation we give to a certain arrangement of parts as a convenient shorthand. The “car” as a single thing is a mental designation in our head. The actual car is not a single thing, but an arrangement of many different parts. We think of it as a single thing merely as a mental shorthand.
If you do not want to be reborn then attain enlightenment in your current life. Rebirth is the result of failing to attain enlightenment. There is no “punishment”, there is just the result of actions. You do the action, you get the result. Acting unwisely will give unpleasant results. Not attaining enlightenment will result in rebirth.
